One of the report’s authors, Professor Myles Allen, the director of Oxford University’s Climate Research Network, has said that people should not look to the IPCC for a “bible” on climate change.
Professor Allen, who admits “we need to look very carefully about what the IPCC does in future”, said that he could not comment on the report as it was still considered to be in its draft stages.
However, he added: “It is a complete fantasy to think that you can compile an infallible or approximately infallible report, that is just not how science works.
“It is not a bible, it is a scientific review, an assessment of the literature. Frankly both sides are seriously confused on how science works – the critics of the IPCC and the environmentalists who credit the IPCC as if it is the gospel.”